Mobile Dad

I usually do not talk about my work on this blog, however  the case studies in the September issue of Academic Commons were so compelling I could not pass up the opportunity to share it with others.  NITLE, my employer, partnered with Academic Commons to promote stellar examples of digital technologies in liberal education.  The War News Radio, war-zone journalism from Swarthmore College,  and VIPEr, a community for inorganic chemists, were by far my favorite case studies.  In all, there are five case studies for your viewing pleasure.  It is always wonderful to read examples of how technologies foster teaching, research and social interactions.  Man I never get tired of this stuff!

[Academic Commons]

There is an interesting news story in Australia where two young girls, 10 and 12, updated their Facebook status stating that they were lost in storm drains rather than calling emergency services (‘000′ down under).  Thankfully a friend was online at the time and contacted authorities.  There was another famous example of social services coming to the rescue for a UC Berkeley student in Egypt however Twitter use made sense as the student was a foreigner.  Has online social services and text messaging supersede calling on mobile phones?  It seems youth will type text messages first rather than actually calling people to socialize.  This example obviously does not demonstrate the norm, however it is something to start tracking.

[ABC News]

A co-worker and friend tweeted a post on Faculty’s lack of interest in Twitter.  Faculty Focus reported it’s results from a survey of 2000 higher education professionals on their use of Twitter.  Roughly 69% of the respondents do not use Twitter for personal or classroom use.  The sample size may be in question but responses to the open-ended questions were defiant.   continue reading…

Dare we say teens are not trendsetters for Twitter? Not too hard to believe according to a reprint from NY Times.  It seems that only 11 percent of the Twitter userbase are from those between the ages of 12-17 based on data provided by comScore.  This is the same group of people that rely heavily on text messaging services from cellular providers.  It would seem Twitter would be a natural outlet for teenagers, yet the service is lost on younger minds.  The service is perceived by teens as professional, aka meant for old folks.  Teens enjoy 1:1 conversation, Twitter is 1:many by design:

Many people use it for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news,” said Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive. “Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.

It is nice to see other demographics setting the direction for social media and not feel out of place in a world dominated by teen marketing.

ConnectED image from ACU

Tonight was the start of ConnectED ‘09 at Abilene Christian University.  ConnectED is centered around the theme of enhancing learning through mobile devices.  ACU has made major strides in incorporating mobile technology as part of their campus infrastructure.  ACU’s ambitious efforts generated immense traction at the recent EDUCAUSE and judging by the size of the crowd at tonight’s keynote speech, they have stumbled onto something big, really big. continue reading…